E-Commerce is a booming industry. And the year 2020 has accelerated its growth in more ways than anticipated.
For any business, the most critical point of concern is when a lead converts into a sale. In other words, when a customer pays for the products or services. Until then, most of the time, the ground stays hazy.
This is true with e-commerce businesses as well. In fact, statistically, nearly 76% of e-commerce leads abandon their carts. This proves that converting a lead is far more important than securing them in the first place.
Worry not! We heard you and created this article.
By the time you would have gone through this article, we are pretty sure that you’ll have all the necessary information to create an effective sales funnel for your e-commerce business. So, without any further ado, let’s begin.
The Four Stages of the Sales Funnel
Typically, for any e-commerce, there are four stages through the sales funnel. During each stage, customer perceptions would determine their decision. To learn ‘how’ keep reading.
Awareness
The first stage of your sales funnel begins with awareness. It literally means reaching out to your customers or improving your brand’s visibility before your target audience. Well, you must already know that SEO helps with this stage of the sales funnel.
Interest
Once the hook is set, whether your target audience would like to buy your products would depend upon how effectively you engage with them. The idea is to keep them interested in your brand and products. Blog posts, social media activity, free webinars, newsletters, are some of the common ways to ensure that your leads remain interested in your brand.
Desire
The next stage is inducing the desire to make the purchase. Once the lead is interested and already exploring your products, they are more likely to stay connected but not convert. In order to make them go a step further (add the products into the cart), your product description can prove helpful.
Action
The last stage of your sales funnel is when the lead finally takes an action and becomes a valuable sale. A spokesperson from a prominent New York SEO Company explains the placement and the wordage of the Click to Action (CTA) buttons at this final stage. How you time this stage, and also how simplistic you keep the checkout process for your customer is also an important factor in the successful conversion of the leads.
Building an Effective Sales Funnel
So, you know what an effective sales funnel should be like, but you also desire to know how to create one for your e-commerce business. Don’t worry, we’ve got your back, here as well.
Identify Customer Journey
The first step to creating a sales funnel that really works is getting to know your customers better. To put this into perspective, you need to map how the customers, or better said the traffic behaves when they first land on your website. This should help you promote your business in places where you’re most likely to find the relevant leads for your business.
Create Customer Maps to Trigger Conversion
Once you’re done identifying and targeting your desired customer group, the next thing to do is triggering the conversion. The second and the third stages are the most crucial ones when it comes to ushering in the desire to make a purchase. So, what you need to do is create content pieces that keep your customers engaged with your brand. Well, you can choose to place comparison charts, or you can give questionnaires to your customers. Studies suggest that interactive content is more likely to keep online users engaged on any website.
Clearly Define the Point of Conversion
Lastly, you’d also need to get your hands on the conversion data. Or better said, you need more information about the sources of the traffic, how many passed on to each stage of your conversion funnel. And also, the number of users that actually made the purchase in the end. Not just that, keeping track of abandoned carts is also crucial for optimizing your sales funnel. Of course, you’d need to understand the reasons why your customers are abandoning products in the carts. After all, these are also the losses that you bear, in terms of non-converting sales.
Optimizing the sales funnel is not just necessary for increasing your revenue, but also for minimizing your costs. When you better understand your customers’ behavior, you are more likely to invest in channels that promise better returns. And eventually, save a lot from unnecessary expenses.
